


Five Things Natalia Romanov Remembers

by ismaene



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mind Control, Natasha Needs a Hug, Natasha Romanov Backstory, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Red Room, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 07:10:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3560750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ismaene/pseuds/ismaene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Soviet Union rises. A young girl trains in a room like blood. A man with a metal arm teaches her. <br/>The Soviet Union falls. A girl who is not so young anymore dances across a chaotic backdrop. And again, a man with a metal arm follows her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things Natalia Romanov Remembers

**Author's Note:**

> I know the timeline is off and I'm sorry! It doesn't follow canon in any sense of timeframe, so if that's going to bother you, you probably shouldn't read it (sorry!)

1\. She remembers sneaking out.   
Two girls standing at the edge of the square. The blonde is crying, and the redhead it holding her. It’s cold out, bitterly cold. There doesn’t seem to be anything beyond the city, just an unending mass of fog and snow and they are all that is left.   
“We need to get back,” the blonde whispers and her voice is almost gone, hanging just on the edge of sound. The redhead shakes her head and snow falls into her eyes. They keep standing there. What else to do? What else to do against the rest of the world?   
“Natalia,” the blonde whispers. “Please.”  
Pleading is sign of weakness is a sign of giving in is a sign of being lesser is a sign of failure is a sign of death. She cannot fail because of she fails she will die and that is not acceptable. He turns to the blonde and grabs he wrists, hardened and chapped from ropes and training and falling. She holds them in her own hardened hands and smiles and pretends that everything is going to be all right.   
From the perspective of a passing stranger, they are two little girls huddled in the corner. Sleepless nights and days without food are scrawled across their faces, their hair is tangled and their clothes look like they are falling off. And yet there is fire biting red hot beneath their skin.   
There is a life beyond the city and even days later, when they have been caught and punished she cannot get the image of swirling snow and dense fog out of her mind because she knows that there has to be something more. 

2\. She remembers Niko.   
Niko, with the chiseled face and cheekbones like knives. Niko with the rough voice and the bright eyes and the hands so smooth—not like hers, somehow still soft and white.   
Sometimes when it’s late at night she remembers how he slipped into her bed one night. She remembers fighting him off, and the taste of blood in her mouth. There’s pressure crushing her windpipe and she wants to scream or cry out but for some reason she can’t and she doesn’t know why.   
He moves in her for far too long and when he finally retreats his face is streaked with tears. She wonders if they are her own, but no, her face is dry and her eyes have been closed. He sits, hunched over and sobbing into his hands, for a long time. She doesn’t dare move. She breathes quietly in and out until he gets up, and when he leaves the room she pretend to be asleep.   
She wakes up at night sometimes and remembers the way he felt. She’s had her mind taken apart and put back together so many times that she wonders if it ever actually happened. She closes her eyes and remembers that he was the one who cried. He broke and she didn’t. But every time she fucks a man there’s a moment of uncertainty where she wonders if it could be Niko, Niko in disguise, if his eyes will open and look at her and this time she won’t be stronger. And this time, he will win.   
She breathes deeply and the cold night air numbs her throat. The world around her is aching and bloody. 

3\. She remembers forgetting.  
And it is pure agony. For days he can do nothing but lie on the bed and let her memories burn inside her head. She cries and screams and somebody has to keep her from biting off her own tongue. She moves her fingers from the stylized way she holds them for ballet to the way she would hold them to squeeze a trigger.   
They stole years. Whole years. Decades.   
She wants to die. Or at least she think she does. She doesn’t know anything anymore.   
How to live in a world that has been formed and reformed over and over again? How to live in a world that doesn’t have record of her, that has forgotten that she even exists?  
The first time is the hardest. The second time she’s only confused for a few hours before she remembers who she is.   
The third time, she barely even blinks. 

4\. She remembers him.   
They are sitting in the practice yard. There is a mannequin full of knives in front of them and she has bent over to pull the handles out when she suddenly finds his gun at her temple. “Quickly,” he hisses. She drops to her knees and grabs the gun. Too late. If there were any bullets in the chamber she would be dead and her brains would be all over the floor.   
Her English is good but her accent clings to certain words. “Morning,” he sounds out and she repeats after him but she can’t seem to get her mouth to form the sound that she wants it to. Even when she doesn’t remember him she doesn’t use the word if she can help it, like some primal instinct is telling her not to.   
She spends a summer with him, the first time. It is the best summer of her life. Her body aches and burns. He teachers her how to torture and teaches her other things as well. She sees Niko in his face and she pushes that far away, as far away as she can and lets him have her if she wants to. She can still be alert, even when his lips are covering her body. She learns that quickly. She learns a lot of things quickly. She learns both the best place to put a knife to hurt and a man and the best place to put her tongue to please him. She learns that there are no second chances. She learns that the Red Room is not the end of the earth and she learns that fifteen years old means that things are changing.   
Moscow is not like it once was. St Petersburg is alive and she is full of revolutionary fever. The Winter Soldier holds her at night and pushes her during the day. Sometimes they race through the streets like children. Sometimes they are sent on missions.   
By the time fall comes she is ready to go out into the world. He hold her hand before she gets her memories erased. He promises he’ll be there when she wakes up again.   
Not surprisingly, he isn’t. 

5\. She remembers Bratislava.   
She starts the mission thinking she’s Jana Petrova, a medical student. When they wake her up she asks for him. He’s Pavel, a boy in three of her classes, and she knows exactly who he is and where he comes from. This time she’s allowed to wake him up herself and she holds his hand while he’s jolted back to himself.   
For a week everything is perfect. The mission is a simple one and she sets it up perfectly. And then there’s nothing to do but wait and be ready. For days, the explore Bratislava. No better cover than love. Their classmates laugh at them and they laugh along. At night, she holds him and he traces her scars—some of which he made. She is so much older and yet time means nothing to her and it means nothing to him. She looks twenty five and he looks around the same age. She kisses him wherever she can and sometimes she knows that she loves him and something she thinks that she doesn’t.   
She’s seen him on and off since she was fifteen, but the encounters have always been brief. This time they have days to spend together and she cannot help but feel stifled by the strangeness of this life.   
The day comes that they’ve planned to complete the mission, and after the target is dead and she’s washed herself of blood, he fucks her on the dead man’s bed.   
They’re supposed to be picked up the next day. They aren’t.   
The Soviet Union has fallen. The Red Room will soon be gone and that means no more missions for her. For the first time she feels utterly clueless. She wanders the tiny flat near the mean square all night and when he tries to bring her to bed she shakes him off.   
In the morning, she is gone. She doesn’t leave a note and he knows exactly where she’s gone and doesn’t follow.   
She stops by the Red Room. In the chaos, she doesn’t bother to hide herself. In her mind, she is screaming. She is tearing out the walls and flipping the chairs and scattering papers into the air. She turns away before she can get too deep into the past.   
Three days later, she’ll go to Istanbul.   
A week after that, she’ll be joining hands with an archer far away from anything she’s ever known. She won’t see him again for years, and when she does he puts a bullet through her hip and leaves her to die. She thinks he says her name, but that could just be the pain.   
Love is for children.


End file.
